BoNF 2017

Best of National Finals 2017

2017′s edition is the 13th BoNF, a contest that survived 12 editions between 2005 and 2016! A retro logo with many music symbols (vinyl, sound, mic) and the phrase “BoNF 2017” on it was chosen, with the black and orange visuals. The contest is being held during the spring of 2017, in April, as explained in the rules here. It’s the last to date but definitely not going to be the last ever as I have, since 2013, become a full administrator on ET helping me make BoNF more noticed. For the 2013 edition, a few of my closed friends on ET got to follow each step of the way, even helping me select the original top 30 songs; it was repeated in 2014 and exploded bigger than ever in 2015, so a big thanks to Dennis, Ivan, Niclas, Nick, Marc, Luke, Patrick! 2016 followed the same footsteps! And also a big thanks to my usual ET friends who have been commenting the songs along the year with me, and disagreed a lot with me, Lynn, Toggie, Shevek, Oxi, Dimitris, Donnie, Dino, Lynn, Anders, Guitar, Max… ad the most recent people who joined, thanks to ETSC, like Gregor, Rosalina, Ren… 2017 here we are!

2017 is the fourth time after the last three years for which I write this before the contest is over. I can’t yet discuss results or patterns except for the origin of songs. The contest hasn’t seen much shift geographically, even if the Nordics and Estonia have declined lately and Ukraine rose slightly. However, it’s the most spread out contest ever with 20 countries for the 30 semifinalists! Rare are now the countries with strong enough NF to secure that many entries in the Top 30: the record this year is 4 shared by Sweden and Ukraine, followed by Estonia at 3 and Iceland and Hungary at 2. Now almost no country has never featured in the semifinal at least once but Bulgaria, Poland Portugal, Macedonia, Armenia and Azerbaijan have a rare one in as they’re not BoNF favorites. Italy’s internally chosen song (even though it’s now set that San Remo winner gets to decide to go first) marks the 5th participation since the country’s return in 2011 and the first in three years after making it to the actual BoNF final for 4 years in a row. Germany has dropped a lot while Finland continues with poor UMK editions but yet secured one song in the semi. As usual, there were a few songs I hesitated with, so sorry to Crime Sea (Latvia), Jenny Augusta (Norway), Brendan Murray (Ireland), Les Gordons (Sweden), Elina Born (Estonia), Mercury calling (Denmark), Fernando Daniel (Portugal), Navi (Belarus), Asea Sool (Georgia) and Júlí Heiðar Halldórsson & Þórdís Birna Borgarsdóttir (Iceland) who were just outside my top 30.

Another interesting element, a record of 11 semifinalists are esc entries. So more than a third! After checking older editions, the record in the final is 8 (2012) and 7 (2008): so 2017 can definitely beat these scores. Moreover, a lot of semifinalists did come second or third in their respective national finals (Daði Freyr Petúrsson in Iceland, Malibu in Georgia, Carmell in Poland, Kerli in Estonia, Elin & The Woods in Norway, The Ludvig in Latvia and Raiven in Slovenia)! So more than half, almost two thirds of the semifinalists are top 3 materials at home! Very few returnees this year, a good thing, except for Swedes, Loreen (BoNF 2011 and 2012) and Wictoria (BoNF 2016) have both already been in the final. The other 28 are all newcomers!

I continued to work harder on getting a good logo, personalized pics for the finalists and for the fifth time I will try posting all individual videos of the finalists on youtube. 43 (as I write this, as Russia is still a question mark) countries will take part in the 2017 Eurovisiong Song Contest but I am not couting Australia in BoNF, though Isaiah would have been a sure semifinalist as it’s in my personal top 10 for this year’s contest, so we’re counting 42 for BoNF. 24 of them used some sort of national finals (one less than the last two years) in which 380 songs were performed (377 in 2015, 373 in 2016) still far from the late naughties figures, with a peak at 650 songs in 2009. I wrote down a list of 85 songs I liked and then came up with this top 30:

Semifinal

My friends could listen to these 30 songs thanks to a Deezer playlist, and they have graded each of them with a 1 (awful) through 5 (great) system. You can also download all 30 songs on this page! For the nineth year, I saved the full results of the semifinal. And so we have from 30th to 16th:

Finalists scored: 38, 38, 38, 39, 39, 39, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49. Last year, three 50points, this year none! And a real gap between the top 5 and the rest; obviously one of these 5 will win BoNF, but all 5 could: seven songs at 38pts and 39pts, while the songs missing are at 37 and 36. So only 3pts separated the song ranked 9th and the song ranked 18th! In general, this was a weaker pointwise BoNF year, but also the highest for a 15th and the highest for a 18th ever!

Final

So now I had all 15 finalists! As usual by now, I also managed to get the songwriter and the composer down for each of them. A quick analysis first: when last year 10 of the performing artists wrote their own songs, only 6 did this year, and that includes mostly groups (Ukraine’s Panivalkova and Hungary’s Spoon 21)! So this isn’t a big year for song writers, when in Sweden neither G:son nor Kempe nor the Debs managed to qualify (or even win MF) or in Estonia, Sven (who did win the horrendous Verona) fail to enter BoNF! But again, it’s also good for diversity to show newcomers! Only one returnee (Wictoria, who was a finalist last year) and only newcomers. As for vocals, we are rather spread out this year (the records are 12.5 entries sung by females in 2015 and 11 entries by male in 2010): 6 male vocals, 9 female vocals! Native languages have dramatically sunk, probably related to the heavy electro turn for BoNF lately, but also because in general NF use less and less national languages, and in Eurovision it’s even now out of the ordinary to hear a national language… We hit a new low, 9, out of 30 in the semifinal; so in regards, having 6 songs not in English is not bad as it means most of the non-English entries in the semi did qualify for the final! So we will hear songs in Ukrainian, Estonian, Slovene, Hungarian, Portuguese and Italian! After 2014’s debut entries for Netherlands and Armenia, this year sees two countries joining the BoNF final family: Azerbaijan and Portugal! Ukraine reigned supreme but with 4 songs in the semifinal, they only got 1 in the final; on the other hand, Sweden who also had 4, qualified 3 of them! Estonia gets 2 out of 4, Iceland and Hungary only one out of two. So… basically… Estonia and Sweden confirm their supremacy on the contest! However, with no other countries with more than 1 song, we get a record of 12 different countries in the final (the usual score earlier in the contest, in 2005-2008)… As for other countries, some are quite the BoNF favorites (Iceland, Hungary Italy) or countries which are no surprises (Denmark is regularly getting one song through). In the end, the two biggest surprises are Bulgaria and Slovenia (both getting their 2nd entry in the BoNF final). Yes the contest is very nordic, with 6 Nordic songs, and then 2 Baltic, 3 Western, 2 Balkan, 2 Eastern countries.

Now, I used a computer “random playlist” to get the running order for the final. I will upload them all individually on youtube, so you’ll be able to just click on the song titles to watch each song and I also made a playlist which you can watch on BoNF’s youtube page.

Obviously im a very dissapointed of Loreens placement. Taking my ott love for Loreen aside for a moment, I still feel that it is a very interesting and unique song, however not an instant one and that could have hurted it in the end here.

”Blackbird” however should have made it hands down. There is soo much raw emotion in that song and it just have this beautiful melody and powerful lyrics. #DISSAPOINTED!

I feel like only the esc bubble loved Loreen’s song. If it wasn’t for Loreen (and my friends probably forgot her), the song itself is not coherent musically and the lyrics are hard to grasp on just one listen!

Editorial Line

The Eurovision Times is a daily updated fan blog about the Eurovision Song Contest and the whole world that surrounds it. It features daily news, interviews, editorials, analysis, updates on former participants and when the time comes, information on the upcoming contest (tickets, dates, videos).
The blog focuses a lot on national finals and the contest's history. Rumors and gossips are discussed at length, as any good fan site, but this is a place with a sense of community, where people's opinions are valued and where conversation and debate are welcomed most of all!

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Sekhmet Morgan is the second overall administrator and editor-in-chief!